Healthcare providers are racing to upgrade their IT infrastructure to meet a variety of patient needs ranging from traditional in-person care to digital self-service solutions. The leaders of these organizations aim to adopt a “patient-first, data-anywhere” approach that prioritizes patients’ needs and experiences while enabling access to medical information from any health condition.
That vision, however, may conflict with available resources. Healthcare organizations, especially smaller ones, are struggling with budget and bandwidth constraints as they seek to modernize their IT systems.
The adoption of AI is on the horizon
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a major driver of modern innovation. More than three in five organizations are planning to upgrade to AI technology within the next three years, according to a recent HIMSS Market Insights study on IT infrastructure development.1 These include generative AI, predictive analytics and workflow automations.
Kurt Telep, Healthcare Field Chief Technology Officer of Cloud provider Nutanix, emphasized the importance of preparing the IT network for AI for data-intensive needs. “To maximize the value of AI investments, it is important to have IT infrastructure capable of ingesting heavy data in order to get actionable insights quickly,” he said.
The adoption curve for AI technology is steep. While only 11% of surveyed organizations are using AI-introduced computer vision algorithms, 69% plan to adopt this technology within the next five years. This represents a potential revolution in medical imaging and diagnostics.
Obstacles in the way of innovation
Despite this optimism, the road to modern IT is fraught with obstacles. More than three in four executives (76%) in the HIMSS Market Insights study cite the rising cost of IT infrastructure as a major obstacle.
On average, healthcare decision makers identified six key barriers, with IT security and sustainability (61%) and prioritizing investments (59%) at the top of the list, according to the survey. Data management presents another important challenge, especially for senior executives. The volume of patient data, along with the need to share it seamlessly across different care settings, is pushing many organizations to their limits.
Telep noted that even small practices need long-term data storage and high data availability to scale their businesses, and that relying on older solutions is becoming expensive. “The cost of maintaining traditional IT infrastructure continues to rise due to the high maintenance associated with legacy technology,” he said.
Healthcare IT vendors can play a key role in organizations’ ability to maximize their revenue and ensure that solutions work as planned, according to Telep. This includes closer collaboration between vendors, especially those that incorporate AI into products and services. “When vendors work together, it leads to more, better results,” he said.
The push for healthcare leaders to modernize their IT infrastructure isn’t about keeping up with the times; it’s also about improving patient outcomes by shaping the future of care. By adopting technologies that facilitate the patient journey and sharing data seamlessly across multiple locations, healthcare organizations can continue to meet the diverse needs of care and remain the preferred provider.
Resource
- HIMSS Market Insights. 2024. IT Infrastructure Modernization. The research was conducted among 54 qualified executives and IT/Technology leaders (managers and above) in the healthcare sector in the United States. Dell was not identified as a research sponsor.
Read the Nutanix State of Enterprise AI Report here.
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